


You and I (Halfway Across the World)

by shauds



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Body Swap, Bruce Wayne Tries to Be a Good Parent, Crystal Brown is also trying, F/M, JaySteph - Freeform, Lost Days Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown is Robin, Talia Al ghul is an okay parent to jason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24822220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shauds/pseuds/shauds
Summary: Stephanie wakes up sore and tired in a freezing compound in Germany, which whatever, not the weirdest thing that's ever happened. Only problem is she didn't go to sleep there, and also, it's not exactly HER that she is when she wakes up, not unless she turned into a guy overnight.Meanwhile, Jason wakes up in the body of a teenage girl back in Gotham when he was supposed to be learning the things Bruce wouldn't teach him halfway across the world.The next day every things seems to be back to normal, and the next they're swapped again. It gets old REAL fast.
Relationships: Crystal Brown & Stephanie Brown, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown/Jason Todd, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd
Comments: 35
Kudos: 139





	1. Chapter 1

This wasn’t Steph’s room. It took her a hot minute after she’d woken up to realize it, and hey, that might have had something to do with how fucking exhausted she was. Another things she just **knew** couldn’t have been right because she’ made a point of getting an early night so that she **wouldn’t** be exhausted for today’s Robin training exercise with Batman.

The sheets were somehow both starchier and softer than her own back home, the pillow too hard and the scratchy woolen blanket thinner than her thick comforter.

She tried, at first to lie as still as possible, listen for what was going on around her the way she’d been taught, but any sounds of life she caught were far off. When she cautiously sat up, cold that was extreme even for Gotham's autumn immediately assaulted her.

The room was bare but for the bed, a small table besides it on which sat a lamp, a look outside the window was all she needed to know for sure that she wasn’t in Gotham anymore. She barely paid mind to the icy cold of the floor against her feet, but brought the blanket with her when she made her way across it, closer to the window, to more clearly see the scattering of buildings covered in snow that was both fluffier and whiter than she’d ever seen in her home city.

That wasn’t even the most bizarre thing about the whole situation; no, that honor went to the reflection staring back at her from the clear glass. Because that wasn’t Stephanie Brown’ gaping mouth, not her **her** wide eyes and hand clawing at hair too dark and far too short. Not her, but a boy who was, at least as far as it seemed, exactly as unhappy with the situation as she was.

There was knock at her door, a rough, hoarse and heavily accented voice calling out a name that wasn’t hers. Steph didn’t look at him, preoccupied with waving her hand at the boy and watching mirror the action exactly.

Was this the training exercise?

**ooo**

Jason was fully expecting to feel the results of his long day when he woke up that morning. Was ready for exhaustion and aching and possibly one of Egon’s annoying lackeys screaming his ear off for him to crawl out of bed to do it all over again. That was just his life now, and he’d become accustomed to it.

But the bed he woke in was soft, warm, and leaping off it in shock landed his feet on carpeting and not cold concrete. Everything was bright, colorful. Sharply turning his head to take in his surroundings flung a lock of hair along his face. Long, blonde hair that was, like everything else around him, bright and soft between fingers of a hand much too small to be his.

”What the f…” He didn’t even get through the whispered profanity, the high voice that emerged from his lips taking even that from him.

It was in a vanity mirror surrounded by half empty bottles of nail polish that he got his first clear look at the, the teenage girl… it had to be a dream.

It was with a barely present mind that he crept out of the room and into a hallway, papered with faded beige and not white washed, empty. From there, Jason didn’t bother with stealth; he rushed through the house, a little rundown, empty house in a row of houses and not a well up kept block in an organized compound. With another bedroom, and a moderately little kitchen and living room, and… it was just a house. A house with the ominous rise of the Gotham skyline looming in the – not distant enough – distance.

”What the fuck.” He whispered again with the girls voice, picking up the slip of paper he found tacked onto the microwave.

_’In case you ran out of time – love mom.’_

Mom. Jason swallowed thickly, his throat hot and drier than the desert he only faintly remembered. He wasn’t all that sure what he expected to find when he opened the microwave, all he found was a bowl, the top covered in plastic wrap. Mashed potatoes and gravy, he discovered when he experimentally poked at it.

He clutched the bowl tightly in his hands, the floor shrinking back from him even as he slid down to meet it, his weight propped against wooden cabinets. A dream, a weird, fucking dream, maybe but that was what convinced him, no way **this** was what someone would choose for a psychic attack of any sort.

However long he sat there, waiting for the shrill shriek of the compounds wake up call to drag him to wakefulness, Jason didn’t know, but it didn’t come.

What did startle him from his state of near blankness was a simple knock on the front door. He moved mechanically towards it. Only a dream, it wasn’t like whatever was on the other side was going to do anything to him, and a singing blue dinosaur might actually have made him feel better.

”You were supposed to meet me at the cave an hour ago Stephanie.”

His heart stopped, the moved abruptly to his throat the longer Jason stared at the large man blocking his view of the street. Jason backed away, throwing his hands before him when he man made as if to approach him, the harsh set of his brow quickly morphing to something like concern. Jason didn’t hear the string of “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” that left his lips.

”Stephanie?” Bruce said… it was Bruce, getting closer, holding his hands near his head, nonthreatening, unmoving and nonthreatening, and… it was Bruce. Bruce repeated the name again, added something else that didn’t make it past the ringing in his ears. Eventually, taking Jason’s stunned silence as some sort of consent; he made a slow, careful move forwards.

He wasn’t supposed to be here, not now, not yet, not until… until…

This wasn’t a dream, it was a **nightmare**.

Jason threw all of his strength into barreling into, then past Bruce, out of the door, and down the street. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t care to know, all he knew was that he had to move, to get away, far away as these shorter legs would possibly take him, his head playing a mantra on repeat, _’wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up…’_


	2. Chapter 2

”Stephanie.”

Though the tone was urgent, the voice calling her name was soft. Steph rolled over, stretching to get the crick out of her back. **Why** had she gone to sleep on the floor? She sniffed and wrinkled her nose, and why did everything smell like mold?

” **Stephanie**.”

”Yeah, okay!” Stephanie threw a hand over head, wincing at the expectation of pain that didn’t come. “Huh.” She scrubbed her knuckles against her brow more roughly, but didn’t find so much as a scratch to agitate. She did find her face to be crusty and sore in another way though. Oh god, had she been **crying**?

The first thing her eyes landed on when she deigned to open them was a water strained ‘ _Poison Idea_ ’ poster and the similarly stained, peeling green wallpaper that surrounded it. The next was the shadow of Batman lurking in the crumbly doorway, still and straight, as if he wanted to come closer but an invisible force was keeping him away.

”What are you doing here?” He asked, a softer lilt to the usual gruffness his voice carried.

”Where **is** here?” Stephanie groaned and tried again to scrub some of the stickyness from her face. “Oh I had the weirdest goddamn dream.” She shook her head lifted herself up off the floor of the rundown… probably **used** to be an apartment at some point. Looking up at the leaky ceiling, and feeling the slight give of the floor wherever she stepped, like it might give way at any second, Steph found it hard to believe even a squatter would risk sleeping here. No wonder Mister Pointy Ears wasn’t coming in, he'd fall right through. “I get kidnapped or something?”

”No, Stephanie, you…” He paused and Stephanie immediately stilled her advance.

”Something wrong?” She asked, worried the floor was even worse than she thought and she was about to become a pancake at the bottom of what her imagination convinced her was a very long drop.

”No,” he said, “Just come over here.”

"Okay, okay, I'm coming." Steph had no great want to stay in the creepy place any longer than she absolutely had to anyway… however she'd wound up here. She paused at the doorway before she left it behind to take one last look in the hopes it would spark **something** but it didn't.

****

**ooo**

”Well, it was cold.” Steph said, ducking under Batman’s swing and twisting her body to get a shot at him with her staff, it missed, predictably. “I was in, I think it was Germany or something, pretty sure the people there were speaking German, but you know, dreamland logic and all, it might have been freaking Canada for all I know.”

”And there was this guy,” She eyed him warily, watching, trying to guess when he was going to move again, but he gave off none of the telltale signs he’s told her to look out for, none that she’d taught herself to either, “but then **I** was the guy,” she paused to press the fist clenching her staff to her chest. “And I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty hot, **real** green eyes, kinda scrawny, but I could go for that y’know.”

”Stephanie.” Batman pushed, exasperation in his voice, as he pinched at the bridge of his nose.

Ha! An opening! Steph charged forwards quickly, cracking out her staff and this time she **almost** got him at the side of his head before his hand shot out to grab the staff, lift it up with her hanging from it and toss both of them to the corner of the training mat. “Damnit.” She bit out. That had to be cheating, how many people could she possibly go up against that were going to be as big and as fast as **Batman**.

”The point is to be ready when one does come along.” He said, and Steph cursed her inner monologue issues for, it had to be the third time today already. “Now your dream.” He settled back into the starting stance. “And you can leave out how attractive you were.”

”Hey, I’m just tryna be as detailed as possible man.” She waved a hand loosely at him. She wasn’t sure **why** he was so interested in her dream. There’d been absolutely nothing Gotham related in it to account for how she’d ended up in that apartment. Or Batman related either for that matter to explain why she had him chasing her all around the city.

”Okay, so, there was this one German guy there - or Canadian guy with a German accent – and **god** did he give me the creeps, like for real, creep vibes. Off. The. Chart,” she swung her staff in an arc, which he ducked under again, then tried the exact same move again, hoping it would catch him off guard, but no, of course it didn’t. “And he says today is ‘full contact training’, so I’m like, cool, I like training, only it wasn’t **this** kind full contact training.”

Sure, that was what Batman called it, but as her repeated unsuccessful attempts to hit him proved, there wasn’t much contact involved, just Steph trying to hit him and him playing keep away. “He takes me to this room that kind of looks like it shoulda been a prison cell, and he tells me to come at him, so I do, and uh…” Steph twirled her staff around, and hopped from side to side, looking for the best angle to come at him again. “Well, there was a lot of contact if you get what I mean. I got slapped around a bunch, and the whole time he’s just yelling, pay attention, what are you doing? Do this, and then he does a move on me, and I gotta try and copy it, but it hurts like hell.” 

She jabbed at Batman with her staff again, remembering the hot humiliation that had crawled up her cheeks when he dream man had laughed at her, when he told her she should have known how to do this already, and what happened to all of her experience. When he tossed her around and she couldn’t do anything about it. It was actually a lot more similar to this than she’d thought, it would be, and huh, maybe it did have something to do with having a breakdown she didn’t remember and trying to get away from Batman.

”And eventually I got one of the moves right!” And she’d tossed the creep out in the snow. Steph remembered it, feeling how it had felt, the way she’d have to have moved to do it in the same way she would have if she’d been practicing it for hours on the training mats and not only in a dream.

She came at Batman again, this time, she threw the staff aside, using the split second he took looking at it, to slip behind him. As he turned, she shifted so she stood besides him, she leaped up, one hand on his shoulder for leverage, she kicked out, which he caught, because he was a bastard, but instead of pulling back, she weaved her other leg round and between both of his, she threw herself back and he went along with her. The both of them went down, **hard** but Steph was quick to dislodge herself and spring back, back and read into her fighting stance. 

Batman, well, he hadn’t cracked his head against the ground the way she had – multiple times – in the dream. He looked up at her from where he lay sprawled on the floor, shock evident on his face. “Where did you learn that?”

”In my dreeeeaaaam.” Steph drew her hand across the air in front of her, she couldn’t keep a giggle from slipping out of her throat, giddy as she did a little victory gig. “Oh my god, I can’t believe that actually **worked** ”.

”In your **dream**?” He asked getting up off the ground, nowhere near as pleased as she was, but screw him, she’d finally gotten a hit in and she wasn’t likely to get another one anytime soon. Steph was going to **enjoy** this.

”Well, probably from some MMA show that stuck in my head and came out as a dream, but yeah.” She jumped closer to him. “I’m even training in my sleep, how’s **that** for dedication!” She grinned up at him, but as per usual, all she got was a blank, stare in return. “But uh, yeah, that was pretty much the dream, snowy place, grumpy guy “teaching”,” she did the air quotes with a roll of her eyes even if she wondered if such a method would actually be useful in real life, “me, and then woke up in the little apartment. No hiding from anyone dressed as a bat the whole time, did hit my head a bunch though.”

Batman was looking off the side, his brows drawn together as he thought. “You can’t think of anything else that might have set it off.”

”Nope,” Steph picked up the staff and twirled it around a couple of times. For some reason, and she knew this should have just made her freak out about it even more, the experience wasn’t **really** freaking her out. It felt weird, sure, but not **wrong**. “Hey, c’mon, you’re not even gonna tell me I did a good job?” Steph slipped into his field of vision again, a grin on her face. “M’not ready to learn the good stuff yet?”

Batman looked down at Steph, not losing the far off look on his face. “I think it might have been driving you too hard, holding you to to high a standard.” He shook his head lightly and some sort of expression came back to his face. “I’m cutting back on your regimen.”

”What?” Steph blinked up at him, that was… “I’m still not good enough to go past a billion pushups and the occasional sparring match? I just landed you flat on your ass!” She jabbed a finger at his chest.

”You also just had a psychotic break you don’t remember that lasted a whole day, **on** the day I’d planned to escalate your training.” He pointed oh so helpfully.

”Yeah, but, that’s…” She held her hands, still clutching the staff, close to her chest. “It wasn’t that, I was excited, went to bed early just like you said, and I packed a lunch and everything.” A lunch that was still in the fridge back home, still wrapped and ready to take out. "I can keep going."

"I'm not saying you can't," To Steph's surprise he wasn't scowling down at her this time, his voice instead carrying an odd softness that she'd rarely seen in her time as Robin. "I'm saying I might have been holding you to to high a standard, and it'll be best in the long run if you slowed down. Now go and wash wash up, then I have some case files for you to work on."

"Okay" Steph relented, knowing she wasn't going to be pushing him into carrying on with the training they were supposed to be doing over the next few days, no matter how hard she tried. Steph slapped on a grin and skipped in his path again before she obeyed, "But I really got you with that last move, huh, huh?" She jabbed his side with her elbow.

"Sure you did," and Batman actually smiled at her, almost like he was a normal person, "showers, **now**."

"Seeya in a bit!" She waved as she jogged off, maybe a shower **would** do her some good. Despite knowing it had been a dream, she still had the eerie feeling she should be feeling some of that residual pain over what she'd thought she'd been doing during it. Weird.

****

**ooo**

The worst part, Jason decided, was the headache, all the other aches and pains making every twitch he dared to make whine at him, he was used to. had learned to deal with. Up until yesterday, though, Egon, the bastard, had always been careful with his head. This was one time Jason was genuinely thankful for the blindfold his 'esteemed' teacher insisted on saddling him with whenever they left the compound. Really, like he couldn't figure out where they were by the landmarks around them if he tried hard enough.

He still thought this whole trip was a waste of his time, he should have been training, learning, getting better in every way he could so he was ready for when he actually went back to Gotham. What was even the point of all this if Jason couldn't even take a little beating.

A little beating that had knocked both itself and everything that had happened yesterday clear from his no aching head and left nothing but that weird as Hell on a Sunday dream behind.

And so Egon had seen fit to drag Jason, blindfold and all, to his usual veterinarian pal for a checkup, despite Jason insisting over and over again that he was fine.

At least the vet wasn't chatty, Jason thought, as he was motioned to an examination table that still held a couple strands of what was most like dog hair, he was asked only the bare minimum of questions - most of which he couldn't answer - for the man to get an idea of where the damage had come from. On the downside the vet looked him over none too gently, clearly accustomed to working with animals who couldn't complain too much about his rough treatment than people who very much could. Jason didn't, because he could take it, but he **could** if he'd felt so inclined.

The verdict was that aside from a probably minor concussion, there was nothing wrong with him. If one were to count the bruising, intense headache, nausea than came along with that and the scabbing over his eyebrow and nose as nothing, of course. He was given some pain but wasn't planning on taking any of them, not with where they'd come from and **not** with the people he was spending his time around.

"Told you so." Jason said, blindfolded and bundled into one of the compounds nondescript SUVs, all cleared for strenuous activities so long as they didn't include getting his head bashed in again. "So, what's on the itinerary for today?"

Egon snorted the way he did every time he thought Jason did something funny, which was a lot of what Jason did when he was trying not to come off as funny. "Today my men will be taking care of a small problem, you will watch and learn, but no getting involved."

"What?" Jason immediately made his objections known. "The vet says I'm fine, I don't have time to waste on **watching**."

"And I don't have money to waste on losing my commission." Egon said, his accent thicker in the way it was whenever someone questioned him. According to some of the men working under Egon, Jason was lucky their boss found him amusing enough to look past it. "You are worth too much." More like Egon liked Talia's money enough to look past it.

"Gee thanks." Jason rolled his eyes sardonically, he moved himself to the door farthest away from Egon, as per usual putting as much distance as he could between the two of them without being obvious about it. Damnit, he'd been hoping he'd get some distraction today, so he didn't start thinking about that dream. Then again, if he was having horribly realistic dreams about Bruce stalking him through Gotham, maybe Jason did need a break. "How long?"

"Two days maybe, if you can **behave** yourself." Jason could tell from the tone of that sentence alone that Egon was wearing his creep smile as he said it.

"Great." Jason huffed, ignoring how the icy chill of the air outside had somehow breached the interior of the car.

****

**ooo**

Four days later, and things were mostly back to normal, normal being a relative term considering his current lifestyle as a trainee at a mercenary camp. He woke up 'trained' had breakfast, plodded along with his self study exercises until it was time for more training, was afforded a couple more trips outside of the compound for some more hands on learning. Jason was comfortably - for lack of a more appropriate word - settled into his routine. Things were progressing nicely, and he wasn't even thinking about the dream anymore.

Then he woke up in a soft, warm bed smelling of vanilla and with the unmistakeable sight of blond hair draped across his face. Back in the room, back in the dream.

"Oh, fuck it all." He growled, stomping over the cluttered carpet to see the girl staring back at him from the dresser mirror.

****

**ooo**

"Ouch." Somehow Steph knew before she'd even taken in her surroundings where it was she'd found herself again. Her everything hurt when she dragged herself from the hard, cold and yet still very welcoming bed. The first thing she saw was the window, the same boy as before clearly as pissed off as she was reflected back at her.

"Oh fuck, **you** again?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated very late again, so sorry for any errors 💖

**Author's Note:**

> If you've watched the movie "Kimi no na wa" you might notice some of the twists in this story before they come up, please don't spoil them in the comments :).


End file.
